The Relationship between Subjective Wellbeing and Subjective Wellbeing Inequality: Taking Ordinality and Skewness Seriously

Arthur Grimes, Stephen Jenkins and Florencia Tranquilli (flortranquilli@hotmail.com)
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Florencia Tranquilli: Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, and Victoria University of Wellington

No 20_09, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: We argue that the relationship between individual satisfaction with life (SWL) and SWL inequality is more complex than described by leading earlier research such as Goff, Helliwell, and Mayraz (Economic Inquiry, 2018). Using inequality indices appropriate for ordinal data, our analysis using the World Values Survey reveals that skewness of the SWL distribution, not only inequality, matters for individual SWL outcomes; so too does whether we look upwards or downwards at the (skewed) distribution. Our results are consistent with there being negative (positive) externalities for an individual’s SWL from seeing people who are low (high) in the SWL distribution.

Keywords: subjective wellbeing; ordinal data; inequality; skewness; WVS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea, nep-hpe and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: The Relationship between Subjective Wellbeing and Subjective Wellbeing Inequality: Taking Ordinality and Skewness Seriously (2020)
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